Website loading speed is one of the most important factors that determine the success of the website and its continuous gaining of trust from its visitors. This makes paying attention to the website loading time one of the most important things that website owners take into consideration, especially since the majority of visitors are mobile phone users, who need a higher speed to load website pages.
In this article, we will provide you with a practical explanation of the most important and most famous methods of testing your site’s loading speed, and then get to all the problems that cause slowness in your site. We will also show you the most important procedures that you must take to get rid of these problems and bring the site to the shortest possible loading period.
Free website speed testing tools
In the following paragraphs, we will explain to you with a practical explanation the most important tools that are used to conduct a speed test for your site, and then obtain important reports about the most important problems that cause an increase in your site’s loading time and the suggested tips to solve these problems.
1 . PageSpeed Insights
The PageSpeed Insights tool, the wonderful free tool from Google, is one of the most important and most popular tools that can be relied upon to obtain a site speed test, with many details about the most important reasons why the site’s loading time increases for visitors, which greatly helps in solving these problems and accessing the site. to the highest possible download speed.
Once you go to the tool’s page, you will find the possibility of linking to the site whose speed you want to test, and shortly after that, the tool begins to display many details about the speed report of opening the site to visitors from various devices.
The following image shows part of a speed test report for a site, which shows the time it takes to open the site and download the various parts and elements inside it:
As shown, it shows you four standards to measure the speed of the site under test. Each standard is divided into 3 parts shaded in color (green – orange – red). We talk more about the concepts of these standards as follows:
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
The FCP standard explains the time it takes the browser to read or review any part or element within the site, for example the appearance of the first image or the first text on the site. Immediately after the expiration of this time, the content of the site begins to appear directly in front of the visitor.
In this particular example, this metric tells us that 26% of the site’s content has excellent or at least good loading speed. While 37% of the site’s content has an average browser response speed, neither great nor small. As for the remaining 37% of the site’s content, it takes too long to appear and load for visitors.
First Input Delay (FID)
The FID standard tells us the time elapsed between the moment a visitor begins interacting with an element within a site and the moment the browser begins responding to it. This standard depends on many factors, including, for example, the size of the images and the amount of data that the browser sends to the server and vice versa.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
The LCP standard also shows the time it takes to display the largest part of the site’s content to the visitor after accessing the site link from the browser. This standard can be improved by relying on a highly efficient server with great response speed.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
As for the CLS standard, it is specific for displaying the period of time that the site takes to display the content while one of the elements within the site moves from one place to another, for example some changes that occur to the content of the site, such as the image viewer that successively changes the displayed image to another image, and so on.
Also, on the same page that shows you the results of the site speed test, you will find other reports titled opportunities , which are opportunities that, if you fix them, the speed of your site will improve more than its current state.
These opportunities are divided into two main types. The first is what is shaded in red, and this means that these problems greatly and fundamentally affect the speed of opening and loading the site, and when they are fixed, you will find a noticeable improvement in the speed and responsiveness of the site’s content to visitors, such as this image that shows some of the major problems. Which should be fixed to improve site performance:
The following image also shows some moderately important problems, but if they are fixed, you will also notice an improvement in the site’s performance and its loading speed for visitors:
Note : Don’t worry if you don’t know how to solve these problems, we will provide you with easy and direct solutions using WordPress plugins at the end of the article.
2. pingdom
The pingdom tool comes as one of the effective tools that provides the ability to test your site’s speed for free, and it offers you some other paid services that you can try for free within 30 days.
Initially, when you enter the main page of the tool to create your own account on the site, the front interface that it provides will open for you 4 types of tests as follows:
- Visitor insights: In this test, you can put your website link, and then it starts showing you some reports about your site visitors in terms of the countries they are located in, the types of devices used, and other data related to the specifications of site visitors.
- Uptime : You place a link to your site, and immediately after that, the tool begins continuous monitoring around the clock and tells you the times when the site is performing well and is at its best in terms of speed in loading and responsiveness of the content to visitors.
- Page speed : This is the test that we are doing today, and it is similar to the speed test from Google that we explained in the previous paragraphs of the article. This test can be used by placing a link to the site, and the tool will begin to display a comprehensive report on the performance and speed of opening and loading the site’s content to visitors.
- Transactions : In this test, you can track the actions and movements that your visitors make within the site, and the way they interact with the site content, which helps you understand the behavior of site visitors more, and thus you are able to understand the way in which you can always provide the best appropriate content to your visitors.
The most famous feature of this tool is that you can conduct a speed test for your site for different places or countries. The following image shows the speed test page in which you enter the link to your site and the name of the site, and then choose the place from which you want to conduct the speed test:
The following image shows part of the speed test report for a site, which shows some data about the speed of opening the site, the size of the content present on the site, and the number of queries that were made between the browser and the site’s server to display the complete content. It also shows you the percentage that the site obtained during the speed test:
The following image also shows another part of the speed test report from the same tool, which shows some of the main problems that need to be fixed in order to improve the site loading speed to the best possible condition:
Thus, this tool can be relied upon to conduct a site speed test, through which you can identify the problems that prevent your site from obtaining the highest possible loading speed.
3. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is one of the easiest free tools that can be relied upon to perform a site speed test in order to identify weak points that can be fixed in order to speed up the site to the highest possible degree.
When you place the site link in the tool, it performs a test and displays various data about the percentage of the site’s opening and loading speed, as well as some other data such as the time spent communicating between the browser and the site’s server, as the following image shows:
The tool also outlines some improvement suggestions in a section of the report titled Top Issues:
By working to fix these problems, your site can reach the highest loading speed for various visitors.
Therefore, each tool performs a speed test for your site according to some of its own standards, and the site speed percentage may differ from one tool to another, but in most cases the same problems will be similar in all tools and you must work to solve these problems in order for your site speed to improve to the best of the situation. His current.
Let us now provide you with practical solutions to the problems that exist on your WordPress site and cause an increase in the site’s loading time, and how to deal with them in the easiest way.
The most common download speed errors and some recommendations
In the previous paragraphs, we learned about more than one free tool to use in conducting a speed test for the site in order to test the site’s loading speed in front of visitors and also obtain the most important technical problems that can be fixed to bring the site to the best download speed rate that can be reached.
In this part of the article, we will quickly review the most important technical errors provided by website speed reports from various tools, and the best solutions to remedy them.
Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources
One of the most common errors provided by speed reports for websites from various tools. This error indicates that there are some code that cause the site to slow down and increase the time it takes to load and appear to visitors.
To solve this technical error on your site, you can display Javascript and CSS codes at the end of the code lines of your site and not at the beginning.
If you do not have sufficient experience to deal with this procedure, which requires some skills in dealing with codes, you can rely on one of the ready-made WordPress plugins that does it on your behalf and without your intervention, such as the famous Auto Optimize plugin .
Preload Key Requests
Another famous error that results from site speed test reports. This error indicates the need to reduce the number of queries that the browser sends to the site’s server in order to obtain all the site’s data and content.
You may need some modifications to the site’s code to solve this error, or you can rely on one of the add-ons that do this, such as the Wp Rocket add-on.
reduce unused java
This error means that your site contains a lot of javascript code that you may not need, and therefore to solve this error you need to delete the javascript code that is not needed within your site.
Some WordPress plugins add a lot of JavaScript code, so always be sure to delete plugins that you do not use or that are unnecessary on your site to help improve the performance and speed of the site further.
Enable Text Compression
This error recommends activating GZIP file compression on your site, which requires you to modify the Htaccess file within your site to do this, or perhaps you can rely on an add-on such as Wp rocket to do it easily and without the need for software modifications yourself.
Serve Image in Next-Gen Formats
One of the most famous errors resulting from speed tests for various sites. This error refers to the connection between converting image formats within the site to the modern Webp extension instead of other extensions such as jpeg and png, which require a longer time to load and appear to visitors.
Of course, if your site contains a large amount of images, it will be difficult to do this procedure manually, but you can rely on the WebP Converter for Media plugin , which performs this task automatically on your WordPress site.
Avoid Multiple Page Redirects
It is one of the errors for which you will not find a software addition or modification to solve it, but this error can be easily resolved by being careful to reduce the number of link redirects within your site and using it only when necessary.
The presence of a large number of link redirects within the site causes additional time to open and display the final site content to visitors.
Utilizing a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
This error provides a very useful recommendation regarding activating the famous CDN system, which contributes greatly to the speed of loading the site and opening it to visitors. You can see more details in the article on how a CDN works and its benefits for a WordPress site .
Avoid Enormous Network Payloads
This error indicates an important recommendation regarding reducing the size and quantity of files and queries on the site. This problem can be easily solved by reducing the size of the image and media files on the site, as well as compressing or reducing the size of the CSS and Javascript files and other various files that you can find in the WordPress plugin. It does this for you.
Read also: Increase WordPress speed in 16 steps that ensure your site’s performance | Advanced strategies
Conclusion |
In the end, we can say that site speed is one of the important measures, and at the same time, it only requires some improvements to your site, and therefore it is necessary to do them in order to overcome the obstacles that prevent increasing the speed of your site in front of visitors, and therefore we have talked before that in a detailed guide about the most important Tips to increase your site speed .
Make sure to conduct a site speed test at least every three months in order to always ensure that your site is at its best and provides a distinctive user experience for all visitors across their different countries and devices.
Also, before launching your site, there are several procedures that need to be taken before publishing your site to users by performing the most important general procedures in improving the site’s performance and ensuring a successful launch, in a way that ensures instilling confidence in visitors to your site from everywhere and on any device used
